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SERIES: LIFESTYLE ISSUES IN THE CHURCH
Doug Goins
In 1 Corinthians 9 the heart of the apostle Paul is on fire. I hope that we can capture the passion in this autobiographical chapter. Paul is revealing himself.
In verse 1 he asks four rhetorical questions to set the tone: "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?" If we read this ninth chapter casually, we might think that Paul is introducing a new subject, his apostolic authority. But this is really a continuation of the argument that he started in chapter 8. In that chapter Paul urged the more mature believers in Corinth to exercise the freedom they had in Christ in a very loving, sensitive way, concerned about the brothers and sisters in the body who had a weakened conscience with regard to the food sacrificed to idols and events that took place in pagan temples. Paul really put himself on the line in 8:13, stating his own willingness to give up his freedom for the sake of these weaker brothers. He said their spiritual life and growth was more important than whatever freedom he had in the Lord Jesus. "Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, that I might not cause my brother to stumble."
We know from our earlier studies in first four chapters of 1 Corinthians that there were some people in the church at Corinth who were very critical of Paul's ministry. He could anticipate that, in light of the challenge of chapter 8, where he asked the mature Christians in Corinth to lay aside some of their legitimate rights, they would begin to question his apostolic authority and scrutinize his life. So this entire ninth chapter is a defense as well as a description of his apostolic calling and ministry that God has given him. It presents his personal priorities in leadership.
Paul uses his own life as an example of what he has asked them to do in chapter 8. He didn't have the mentality as a leader, "Do what I say, not what I do." It struck me as I was studying chapter 9 that the way it's presented stands as a wonderful model of leadership. Paul practiced in his own life what he preached to other people. That was consistently true in the leadership of the early church. The influence that these men had didn't come just from what they wrote or preached in the churches. Their authority came from the fact that they themselves were an incarnation of their own message.
In this regard I thought about the life of Mother Theresa, who died several months ago. She demonstrated the same principle of incarnation that we see in the apostles in the first century. Over the years, with the media coverage that began back in the 1960's when Malcolm Muggeridge first introduced her to the world, and then through her visits to the United States, our attention was riveted on her ministry to the poor, sick, and dying in Calcutta. And in every circle in which she moved, Protestant or Catholic, church or state, television or some other public forum, she was given an attentive hearing. Her authority didn't come from the writing that she did (journal pieces and books) or from her speaking ministry. Many other people have preached the same message that she did about the dignity of the poor and the dying, the sanctity of human life, and the calling to serve those who are the least for Jesus' sake. Mother Theresa's amazing impact came from the integrity of her life, from the fact that she had laid aside everything in order to give herself with a singular focus in loving ministry to the poor and the dying in Jesus' name.
In studying 1 Corinthians 9, we will catch the same laser-sharp focus, the same loving intensity in Paul's passion for pastoral ministry. He lived life with the same sacrificial limitation, completely sold out to "the gospel of Jesus Christ," which is a phrase he will use a couple of times in this chapter.
Paul teaches two principles for ministry in the body of Christ here. In verses 1-14 he is going to establish beyond a shadow of doubt that as a full-time minister of the gospel of Christ, he has every right to be supported financially. The church of Christ is obligated to him before the Lord to meet his physical, material needs. But then in the second half of the chapter, verses 15-23, he explains why he chose not to exercise that right, not to be supported by the church in Corinth. So Paul uses himself in this chapter as an illustration of the mature use of liberty. He was free to receive this financial support from the Corinthian church, but he willingly "set aside" that right-and he uses that term a number of times-in order to achieve a much more important goal.
THE RIGHT TO BE SUPPORTED
This is a long passage, and we won't unpack every detail, but will just summarize the big issues in the chapter. Let's look at verses 1-6, where Paul explains his apostolic calling, identity, and authority, and then summarizes some of the legitimate physical, material needs that he had as an apostle.
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
My defense to those who examine me is this: Do we not have a right to eat and drink? Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?
That last word "working" means manual labor. Part of the problem as far as the Corinthians were concerned was that the Greeks despised manual labor. The citizens had slaves to do that kind of work so they themselves could enjoy sports, philosophy, and leisure. In contrast, the Jewish culture that Paul was a product of magnified honest labor. Even rabbis were expected to be able to support themselves with a trade as they taught the Torah. So Paul had been trained as a tentmaker, a worker in animal hides.
Verse 1, as I said, focuses on Paul's apostleship. Paul, along with Jesus' original twelve disciples, had been a personal witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember, the Lord appeared visibly to him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-5). So, like the other apostles who were commissioned by God to lay the foundation for the church of Christ, Paul gave witness everywhere he went.
Then in verse 2 Paul says that he considers these Corinthian believers themselves to be proof of his apostleship. The church at Corinth was one of the results of Paul's faithful apostolic ministry. He calls them his work and the seal of authenticity on his life, calling, and ministry. Corinth was a very difficult place to minister, as we can see from the history Paul had with these people as recorded in Acts 18 and in both of his letters to the Corinthians. Yet the Scriptures also tell of the tremendous spiritual impact Paul's life had on the people in Corinth, not because of his own strength or effectiveness, but as he very clearly says, because of the power of God at work in him.
So in light of these apostolic proofs in these first two verses, Paul says in verse 3 that he is glad to defend his ministry. It doesn't bother him at all for his apostolic authority to be challenged.
In verses 4-6 he lists three rights that he has as a faithful apostolic servant of Jesus Christ. Six different times that word "right" is used in this chapter. It's a very central issue. We could summarize these three verses by saying Paul had a legitimate right to receive financial support from the people to whom he ministered. In verse 4 he says in effect, "I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. I represent the Lord. I deserve to be welcomed and cared for, provided food and lodging."
He mentions in verse 5 the right to a believing wife. We've seen in our earlier studies in 1 Corinthians that at this point in his life, Paul was not married. But he's saying that if he had a wife, he should be given enough financial support so she wouldn't have to work, allowing her to be involved with him in the ministry. He argues that Peter had a wife, as did the brothers of Jesus (the sons who were born to Mary and Joseph after the Lord Jesus). The other apostles had wives, and the churches supported them to travel together as couples. Paul had the same right, but as a single man he didn't use the right.
Paul also says in verse 6 that he had the right to devote all his energy and time to the work of the ministry. He wasn't required to make tents. The other apostles didn't have to support themselves with a trade. They gave themselves completely to the ministry of the word. In contrast, he and Barnabas made a voluntary choice to work with their hands, and as we know from other Scriptures, it was to support not just themselves, but the other men who traveled with them, like Timothy and Titus.
THE APPEALS TO WORK PRACTICES, THE LAW, FAIRNESS, AND JESUS' TEACHING
Now in verses 7-14 Paul is going to give five reasons why he has the right to be supported by the churches to whom he ministered, why he shouldn't have to work at a trade to earn a living, so he can devote his energy to study, prayer, preaching, and teaching. He begins with an appeal to common sense in three illustrations from everyday experience in the work-place. Look at verse 7:
Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock?
Paul is pointing out that soldiers don't fight all day and then go to civilian jobs at night so that they can pay for their food, lodging, clothing, and armaments. No, the government provides all the necessary resources for them to function as a soldier. Paul makes the same point about farmers. You don't plant a vineyard or cultivate crops for somebody for free, and then take a night job to subsidize the farming work. You expect that if you work hard in the vineyard or on the farm, you'll be paid, perhaps in kind with some portion of the crops. He makes the same point about shepherds who care for flocks or sheep owned by other people. At least they have the right to have some of the milk. (These analogies that Paul uses are very interesting, because in the Scriptures, first the nation Israel and then the church of Jesus Christ are pictured as an army, a vineyard, and a flock of sheep.) In the same way, a Christian worker has a right to expect benefits from his labor.
Then Paul uses the Scriptures to back up his point in verses 8-10:
I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the Law also say these things? For it is written in the Law of Moses, "You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing." God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.
He supports the principle from Deuteronomy 25:4. He quotes this same verse in 1 Timothy 5:17-18, where he makes the point that the church ought to pay its pastors well. So Paul understands the spiritual principle in the commandment: The laborer has the right to share the bounty. Now, in case you're concerned, Paul is not against the oxen. His point is that oxen, not being able to read, are not the ones who are going to appreciate the principle. It's really for our benefit that the spiritual principle is given. Like the oxen that have plowed the soil in preparation and then tread out the grain that has been harvested, Paul himself has plowed the soil in Corinth and has seen a spiritual harvest in the lives of the people in Corinth from the seed he planted. So it's only right that he enjoy some of the physical, material fruit.
In verses 11-12 he appeals to the inherent fairness of it.
If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we should reap material things from you? If others share the right over you, do we not more? Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endure all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.
Even though Paul chose not to exercise this right of support, it was still a principle that ought to be universally recognized. Paul is asking these Corinthian Christians, "How much does it really mean to you that your life has been transformed by the gospel? What value do you put on the blessing that you've received? Are you grateful for your changed lives? This principle of grateful hospitality and generosity ought to be the instinctive response to God's blessing in Jesus Christ. So if we have been recipients of some spiritual blessing, we ought to desire to respond with material blessing for the ministry or the individual whom God used to help us spiritually.
Now in verse 13 he makes a reference to Old-Testament Jewish history and custom pertaining to the temple.
Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple, and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share with the altar?
He is referring to the care of the Levites who served the worship life of the nation of Israel. The Old-Testament Law commanded that a portion of the sacrifices of meat, meal, oil, and wine be saved for the priests. "Attend regularly" means to work full-time. Their whole lifestyle was one of ministering in the temple, so they needed to be provided for.
Paul finishes this section with his weightiest appeal, to Jesus' own broad teaching of the principle. Verse 14:
So also the Lord [Jesus] directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.
In Matthew 10:9-11, when Jesus was sending the twelve out to minister, and in Luke 10:4-7, when he was sending the seventy out, he said in effect, "The laborer is worthy of his wages." Jesus was commanding his people to offer support to people who minister to them.
I don't want to belabor the point, but the argument in this whole opening section establishes the principle that it is fundamentally right for a church to provide salaries for staff members. The Lord's servant deserves to be supported well. In the passage I mentioned earlier from 1 Timothy 5, Paul describes it as receiving double honor. I realized last week that sadly enough, too often instead of double honor, there is kind of a double standard. For pastors, missionaries, and other Christian workers the standard is a lot lower than what is set for those laboring in the world system. We ought to pay people in ministry as generously as we possibly can, given economic realities in the communities that we live in. We ought to trust them with the stewardship of the resources we provide, just as we want to be trusted with how we use the resources that God gives to us.
Now, obviously, we must be thoughtful about whom we give our money to. It must be a ministry that is Biblically sound, that is proven to be responsible and genuinely spiritual. Not every appeal made in the name of Jesus deserves the support of his people. We must be discerning and wise in our giving. But when we do give to a servant whom we have decided is worthy of support before the Lord, we should give happily, generously, and trustingly.
I am very grateful that in all my years at Peninsula Bible Church, the elders here have understood the principles that Paul has unfolded. They have been generous and gracious. They trust the pastoral ministry team here to the Lord. Nobody looks over our shoulder about how we manage money. So I'm not preaching this to Peninsula Bible Church.
Now Paul shifts gears, and he is going to develop the point he introduced in verse 12b: "Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endure all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ." When Paul came to minister in Corinth, he deliberately chose not to accept financial support, and the second half of chapter 9 explains this choice.
We observed in the early studies in this book (Discovery Papers 4508-4517) that the Christians in Corinth tended to be fixated on power, prestige, and privilege. Their view of Christian living was controlled by a sense of spiritual entitlement, and they wanted an apostle who exuded an air of spiritual authority. They lorded it over people whom they deemed spiritual inferiors, and they expected an apostle to do the same. They understood Christian leadership in terms of mastery, not servanthood. So you can understand why they didn't respect Paul's leadership. He worked with his hands to support himself. He wasn't assertive enough as a leader. Remember, they said that in his letters he was very forceful, but in person he was rather weak and unimpressive (2 Corinthians 10:10). He was too willing to deny himself his freedom in Christ for the sake of other people. And, perhaps the greatest affront of all, he wouldn't accept their financial patronage-and that was probably because he knew there were strings attached. They would want to control his life and his values in ministry.
The second half of the chapter falls into two sections. Each one opens up a personal priority for Paul's spiritual leadership, and neither of them had anything to do with money: (1) the reward of doing something for nothing in ministry, and (2) the freedom and blessing of flexibility in ministry. Paul is amazingly transparent in these verses. He takes a tremendous risk. The Corinthians are already on his case, and he is only going to strengthen their resistance to him, in a sense, by the things that he is going to say. He gets quite emotional, too, at points. These are his spiritual sons and daughters who are questioning his role in their lives.
THE REWARD OF DOING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
Let's read verses 15-18, where he addresses this issue of the reward (that's another important word in the paragraph) of doing something for nothing.
But I have used none of these things. And I am not writing these things that it may be done so in my case; for it would be better for me to die than have any man make my boast an empty one. For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. What then is my reward? That, when I preach the gospel, I may offer the gospel without charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
There's a spiritual reward in ministry that far exceeds the purely material reward. Paul made the point in verse 12b that he wants to avoid all possible charges of impure motives or misuse of funds. And he clarifies in verse 15 that his defense of apostolic rights has not been a subtle hint that he wants to reverse the policy now. The last part of verse 15 is very hard to translate. It's a passionate outburst that results in a fragmented sentence. Literally in Greek he says, "For it would be better for me to die than-No one will empty me of my boast." He would rather die than take support, and nobody is going to rob him of what he has to boast in.
When Paul uses the word "boast" in his writings, he isn't talking about personal accomplishments. He is talking about what the Lord has done through him in spite of his weakness. In verses 16-17 Paul says that he cannot legitimately boast in his ministry of preaching, because God ordered him to do it. There is an irresistible call of God on his life, and he can't take any personal credit for doing it. You could paraphrase verses 17-18a this way: "For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward, but if involuntarily, I receive a commission from God. What then is my reward?"
The rest of verse 18 answers the question. Paul's reward turns out to be, in part, his total freedom from all merely human pressure or constraint on his ministry, which accepting support from the Corinthians, with their mixed motives, would have invariably brought. Now, it's true that at times Paul did accept financial support from some churches, but he never asked for it and never expected it. He was committed to offering the gospel free of charge.
Another reward that drove him to work late hours into the night making tents so he could minister for free was the sheer delight it gave him to bless and enrich someone else without taking a penny in return. Through my years in para-church and church ministry, I've known people who followed Paul's example, who laid aside the financial privileges to which they were entitled for the sake of the gospel. They were volunteers in the body of Christ and underpaid Christian workers who rejoiced in the inherent spiritual reward for spiritual service.
When God began to deal with me concerning a call to vocational ministry, I had to consider my own father's example of sacrificial pastoral servanthood. I resisted that call for several years and stayed in business, because several of the churches my father pastored when I was growing up either ignored or violated the principles that we've surveyed in verses 1-14. At one point in my father's ministry, when I was in junior high school, he became a bi-vocational pastor. That's just a fancy name for a minister who can't live on the salary that the people to whom he ministers pay him, so he has to get another job on the side. For two years my father worked full-time and pastored full-time. He took the bus downtown every day to be a stock boy at a department store. When you're in junior high school, something like that is very embarrassing. (Of course, at that age everything about your parents is embarrassing!)
But through the years in various churches, I watched my father serve with unselfishness and love for the people, even when they could have afforded to do better by him financially than they did. As an adolescent, I had some angry talks with my father about the churches' irresponsibility toward him and our family. But he always reflected the apostle Paul's freedom and joy in the ministry. He loved to serve the Lord and he loved to serve people. He was willing to endure all things. It was clear to me that if my father's goal in life had been to make money, he wouldn't have been a pastor. He agreed with me, at times, that churches probably ought to have taken better care of us than they did, but I think his sense was that to try to pressure leadership into doing right by our family would hinder the effectiveness of his ministry. His reward was offering the gospel freely, living by faith, trusting God to meet our needs. I look back now as an adult and see that we didn't always have what I wanted when I was growing up, but God always provided what we needed.
So when I chose to surrender to God's call to pastoral ministry back in 1974, my own father was a powerful example of how a pastor ought to think about his rights and his privileges. And I hope I never get away from the fact that the reason I do this is because of the spiritual reward, because of you, and not because of what you pay me.
THE BLESSING OF FLEXIBILITY
In verses 19-23 Paul amplifies the question he asked in verse 1: "Am I not free?" He talks about the blessing that comes if you're able to be flexible in ministry.
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ [the royal law of love], that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
Six different times in this paragraph, Paul states his desire to win as many people as possible to Christ, to save them from their lostness. He makes plain the evangelistic principle underlying his attitude toward both meat offered to idols and money for his ministry. He didn't care if money was there or not, he was going to serve the gospel. And he didn't care whether he ate food sacrificed to idols or not, the needs of the person he was with were what mattered. Whatever he did, he wanted to clear away unnecessary obstacles that might hinder unbelievers from coming to Christ.
Verse 19 makes the point that freedom from human entanglements allowed Paul to give the best possible service in the gospel to the widest range of people. He wanted to be a full-service apostle. Though he enjoyed liberty as a Christian worker, he willingly made himself the servant of all men that he might win them to Christ.
Now, this doesn't mean that he followed what was even then the contemporary slogan, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," because that would be compromise. That's rooted in either self-indulgence or fear. Paul's attitude was rooted in agape love. He wasn't lowering his standards, he was laying aside his personal privileges.
It also wasn't hypocrisy. It was empathy. He tried to understand people who needed Christ, to enter into their experience. He was Jewish by birth, so he used that key to open the door to the heart of the Jews. He was a Roman citizen, so he took advantage of that identity to reach the Gentiles. He was able to enter into the weakness of weak people and identify with them. "All things to all men" in verse 22 just means the wonderful freedom of choice to accommodate ourselves to other people, to understand them so we can lead them into a saving knowledge of Christ. Paul was not insensitive in his evangelism. He was not like a bull in a china closet. He was creative. He was flexible in his relationships and in the different ways that he presented the gospel to people.
In verse 19 Paul says he was free from all men. That freedom was very important. It meant that he was free from the expectations of his peers. He was free to take risks for the sake of the gospel. One of the things that made him so effective in his ministry is that he didn't need to have apostolic consensus in order to do something. I don't think there is any more subtle tyranny or pressure than the group mentality. Christians who have to have its approval are not truly free. You see, if Paul had been bound by concern for what the Jerusalem council felt about him, the Gentiles never would have been evangelized. This freedom that Christ brought to Paul, and to us as well, has to be as broad as our lives. The paragraph defines lifestyle evangelism. Paul lived out an attractive freedom from personal ambition. He was free from the fear of failure, free from the intimidation of his enemies, free to make commitments, but most importantly, free to love the people whom God loved.
Our temptation is to be selective in whom we love. But if we show that kind of partiality, we are not really free. We must be free to give our time, our money, and our very selves for the sake of the gospel. Christians who focus on getting are not free. They're really slaves of their own self-centeredness and fear. That's a very risky way to live, if you take these last two paragraphs seriously. We are called to be willing to live without getting anything in return financially, to invest our resources in love, to be all things to all people.
I want to tell you a story that illustrates these last two paragraphs. There are people among us who minister without concern about the financial reward, and who enjoy tremendous flexibility because of their freedom in Christ. They are able to be a blessing in people's lives. I have a dear friend here at PBC who ended up in a business establishment in Tijuana, Mexico around Christmas. (The fact that he ended up there, I believe, was an accommodation to a weaker brother with whom he was traveling.) He is a Christian businessman. This establishment was a combination nightclub, restaurant, and brothel. The young women who worked there were supposed to get as much money out of the clientele as possible by selling alcohol, food, or sexual favors.
My friend engaged a young woman in conversation and very quickly, because this was his heart, they began to talk about spiritual things, with his little bit of Spanish and her little bit of English. He began to probe as to where she was in life, and he sensed a spiritual hunger. At one point they got in trouble with the manager because they weren't spending enough money on alcohol, so he sent them into the restaurant to spend money on food. The food was terrible, so my friend said, "Let me take you to a really nice restaurant. We'll have a good dinner together, and we can keep talking about these things."
The woman said, "I can't. I have five more hours to work on my shift."
He said, "Well, how much to buy you out?"
She said, "I don't know. Nobody has ever asked before."
He ended up talking to the owner of the establishment, who said that for $250 American he could have the next five hours of the woman's time. So he paid $250 to buy her out of that place. He took her to dinner, and they talked for hours. He believed that she had opened her heart to Jesus Christ. So they went back to his hotel room and got on the phone to Mexico City, where our dear friends Jaime Guererro and Alberto Acevedo minister. They spent an hour on the phone with him in English and with her in Spanish. At the end of the time, Alberto said, "Yes, she has opened her heart to Jesus Christ. She has been born again. She understands the call of Christ on her life."
Sometime during the next few hours they went back to the brothel, and she quit, cleaned out her locker, and made a break with that life. They helped her arrange to get back to Mexico City to be with her family for Christmas. She was one of ten or twelve children. Her father was a farmer outside of Mexico City.
A week or two later, Alberto Acevedo drove five hours to her home. He had the joy of presenting the gospel in explaining the choice this young woman had made in her life, and her eighty-five-year-old grandmother, who was dying, opened her heart to the Lord Jesus. A week or two later, Jaime led her father, who had never known she was a prostitute in Tijuana, to Christ. So three people are in the kingdom of God because my friend was willing to risk and not worry about what people thought about where he was. The most recent word from Alberto and Jaime, who were here for our men's retreat at the end of January, is that the young woman is growing in the Lord. She's in the Scriptures and is being discipled. She's living in the home of a Christian family in Mexico City.
My friend really demonstrated for me Paul's selfless accommodation to where people are, the freedom to love everybody God loves, and the willingness to love practically, without counting the cost financially.
Listen to the way C.S. Lewis describes agape love, the royal law of love that we're called to express in Jesus Christ, in his book The Four Loves. It speaks with equal force to those in vocational ministry and those who serve voluntarily without pay, those in spiritual leadership in the body and those who follow that leadership, in essence to every one of us.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable...The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."1
The Lord Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). To demand our rights as a pastor or a lay person is to condemn ourselves to spiritual poverty, but to voluntarily give up our rights is to enjoy spiritual abundance. To use Paul's vocabulary, it's a rewarding and blessed life of freedom.
NOTES
1. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, © 1960 by Helen Joy Lewis. All rights reserved. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, NY. P. 169.
The Scripture quotations in this message are all taken from New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Catalog No. 4525
1 Corinthians 9:1-23
Eighteenth Message
Doug Goins
February 8, 1998
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